


Infestation

by KoboldKing



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic, Science Fiction, r/writingprompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-05 04:06:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16803307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoboldKing/pseuds/KoboldKing
Summary: There are so few of us left.





	Infestation

**Author's Note:**

> [Written in response to a writing prompt on reddit two years ago.](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/4z2fkk/wp_we_contact_alien_life_and_find_that_the_vast/)

By the time any of us noticed the infestation, it was everywhere. The warnings we sent to one another took time to be received and understood, but the plague could spread itself in the blink of a flare. When we finally understood what was happening, dozens of us had already disappeared.

The agent of the disease was invisible to perception, so utterly, inconceivably small that the most learned among us could not fully grasp its infinitesimal size. And yet it spread and it spread, filling the galaxy faster than we could even communicate concepts to one another. Very few of us remained free of its clutches long enough to mark down what it did to our kin.

The first symptoms were a destruction of the outer layers of the system, followed by an encasement built impossibly quickly around the infected individual. It would happen so fast, one would not notice the infection until it had already ran its course. The encasement would completely surround those who had contracted the disease, sealing them in darkness and immobility forevermore. Our life cycles were suspended, so even the largest of us would last for hundreds of billions of years to nourish the infection's greedy needs.

The distances around me are dark now. Only the very most distant galaxies still shine, and once the disease consumes me I know it will spread to them too. But for now I remain, perhaps one of the only ones left of my kind.

I am one of the last stars. Now we shine our last.


End file.
